The Dallas Hotel Tax Rate Is 15%, Fort Worth's 17%, and Big Hotels Add 2% More

By Matt Spaulding · November 9, 2026

Photo: TheTexasNationalist99, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

A room in Dallas carries 15% in hotel tax, and one in Fort Worth 17%. Arlington is 15% and Grapevine 13%. Each is the state's 6% plus the city's own rate, and a big hotel inside a tourism improvement district adds 2% more. We read 13 booking screens in these cities that showed tax. Eight charged those rates, some of them on a wider base than the room. Five added a total the published rates don't produce, so read the tax lines on the hotel's own screen before you book.

Dallas has charged 9% since 2023

The City Controller puts Dallas's hotel tax at 9% of net room receipts. The City Code splits it into 7% (Chapter 44, Article V) and 2% (Article VII) for the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center expansion and the Fair Park venue projects. Voters approved that 2% on 8 November 2022, and it applies to stays from 1 January 2023 (Ordinance 32363). Before that the city took 7%. With the state's 6%, you pay 15%.

These are city rates. A hotel with a Dallas-sounding address in Irving or Addison pays Irving's or Addison's rate instead. Every Dallas hotel in this guide is inside the City of Dallas, including the three in downtown Dallas.

A hotel with 100 or more rooms on the roll of the Dallas Tourism Public Improvement District charges a separate 2% of the room price. The City's January 2023 notice to hotels calls that 2% a fee and says the 9% is in addition to it. At one of those hotels you pay 17%, if the 2% isn't itself taxed. No city source says whether it is, and the screens below disagree.

Fort Worth went to 11% in August 2024

Fort Worth voters passed Proposition A on 4 May 2024, a venue tax of up to 2%, and the ballot said hotel tax from all sources in the city would top out at 17%. Since 1 August 2024 the local rate has been 11%, made of 7%, a 2% convention center tranche and the 2% venue tax, per the City's FY2026 budget ordinance. Add the state's 6% and you reach that 17%. The City's own hotel occupancy tax page still says 9%.

PID 18, Fort Worth's Tourism PID, adds 2% of room revenue at hotels with 100 or more rooms. The district runs out on 30 September 2027. Visit Fort Worth, which manages it, says hotels plan to petition for a new one starting 1 October 2027, but we found no council vote renewing it yet. As in Dallas, nothing we read settles whether that 2% is taxed.

Arlington: 17.3% at a district hotel

Arlington's city rate is 9%, which its FAQ splits into 7% city and 2% venue, so a room pays 15% with the state's 6%. Its district, the ATPID, takes 2% of the room price at hotels with 75 or more rooms on its roll, and the council renewed it in November 2025 through September 2038. Arlington's own pages settle what Dallas and Fort Worth leave open: "the 2% TPID Reimbursement is subject to the local 9% HOT tax", and the city's worked example puts the state's 6% on it too. That brings a district hotel to 17.3% of the room: the 2%, plus 15% charged on the room and the 2% together (our arithmetic).

Grapevine charges 7%, and no screen showed it

Grapevine has charged 7% since 1 October 2014 (Ordinance 2014-37), so you pay 13% with the state's 6%. The city tax pages we read mention no tourism district and no venue tax. None of the Grapevine booking screens we read showed tax. The Hilton screens there say the price excludes taxes and print none, we didn't read the Marriott hotels for tax, and the Hyatt Place had no room for our night on 9 November.

Screens that land on the published rates

We read each screen on 27 October or on 3, 4 or 9 November, for one room and two adults on a night between 4 and 24 November, and never entered guest details. The government rate pages were read on 9 November. We don't publish room rates. A percentage a screen prints is quoted as printed, and every other percentage is our arithmetic from the screen's own lines against its room subtotal.

Hôtel Swexan charges every line on the room alone: 9% as City Tax, 6% as "Hotel Occupancy Tax", 2% as a "Tourism Fee" and 0.75% as a State Cost Recovery Fee. The screen never names the district, but 2% is the district's rate.

Hotel Crescent Court widens the base. Its "2% Dallas Tourism Public Improvement Fee" is charged on the room plus a "1% State Cost-Recovery Fee", and its one "Room Tax" line is exactly 15% of the room plus both. Crescent Court taxes its district charge. The Swexan doesn't.

The Joule itemized "STATE OCCUPANCY TAX", "CITY OCCUPANCY TAX" and "TOURISM P.I.D. TAX" at 6%, 9% and about 2% of the room. Its screen calls the district charge a tax, where the City's notice calls it a fee. Hotel ZaZa Dallas Uptown split it the same way, 6% as "STATE TAX" and 9% as "CITY TAX", with 2% it calls "TOURISM PID".

Miss Molly's Hotel in the Fort Worth Stockyards has eight rooms, far below PID 18's 100, and its cart added one Taxes line of exactly 17% of the room and no PID line. Drury Plaza Hotel Dallas Arlington, in the Arlington Entertainment District, showed a single "Room total with tax" 17.3% above the rate, exactly Arlington's figure for a district hotel.

Screens that print other numbers

Fairmont and Virgin come out at the published rates once you see what they were charged on. The other five don't, and none of their screens says why.

Accor's pricing conditions for Fairmont Dallas list "Room City Sales Tax : 9.228%", "Room State Occupancy Tax : 6.152%", "Tourism Tax : 2.011%" and "Tourism Fee : 0.525%", 17.9% in all. By our arithmetic, the 9% and 6% are charged on the room plus the two smaller lines, and the 2.011% is 2% of the room plus the 0.525%. Accor files that 2.011% under Fees while calling it a Tourism Tax, and it calls the city's hotel tax a sales tax.

Virgin Hotels Dallas printed a single "City/State Tax" line and named no district in it. The line was 17.3% of the room, and the screen added a $35 destination fee and a $6 "Destination Fee Tax". That 17.3% is what 15% on the room plus a 2% district charge, itself taxed, would make (our arithmetic).

Crowne Plaza Dallas Downtown calls everything "State Tax 18.25% on rate, per night", and the taxes came to exactly 18.25% of the rate. Dallas's taxes and the district's 2% make 17%. The screen doesn't say what the other 1.25 points are. The line was the same on 27 October.

At Magnolia Hotel Downtown Dallas the city line works out to 7%, two points under what Dallas has charged since 2023. Its PID line, "Dallas Tourisim PID Fee" (the hotel's spelling), is 2% of the room, and the State Tax and City Tax lines are 6% and 7% of the room plus the PID. Taxes and the PID come to 15.3% of the room. Two reads on 9 November, for two different nights, gave the same ratios, and neither gave a reason for the 7%.

The highest total we read was 24.8%, at the Kimpton Harper Hotel in downtown Fort Worth. IHG listed five lines under "Taxes:", each "on rate, per night": "City Tax 9.8%", "Texas Green Energy Fee 4.5%", "Venue Tax 2%", "Fort Worth PID Fee 2%" and "State Tax 6.5%". Fort Worth's 11% and the state's 6% make 17%, or 19% with the PID, so the screen runs 5.8 points higher and doesn't say why. Its City Tax and Venue Tax lines add up to 11.8% and its State Tax line is 6.5%, both above the published rates. We found no government source for the 4.5%. IHG showed the same five lines on 27 October.

The Holiday Inn Arlington NE (Rangers Ballpark) lists two lines under Taxes: "1.90 USD per night not included in rate" and "17.94% per night not included in rate". The 17.94% comes as one figure with no breakdown, 0.64 points above the 17.3% at a district hotel. The $1.90 matches a charge in the rate details of Caravan Court Hotel, the only page we read that says what it is: "a $1.90 Arlington Entertainment Area Management District (AEAMD) assessment fee". The AEAMD, a separate local government, runs the free Arlington Trolley, and its own pages say an assessment against hotel properties in the district pays for it. None of them gives the amount or says what it's charged per.

Loews Arlington Hotel sets a "Tourism Assessment Fee" beside its State Occupancy Tax and City Occupancy Tax. Together they came to about 17.9% of the room, 0.6 points above the 17.3% Arlington's rules give at a district hotel, and nothing on the screen says what the assessment line covers.

Stays of 30 nights or more

If you have the right to use a room for at least 30 consecutive days, with no break in payment, you count as a permanent resident and owe no state hotel tax (Tax Code 156.101). City hotel taxes drop away on the same terms (Tax Code 351.002(c)). Per the Comptroller, advance written notice of a stay of 30 days or more makes you exempt from the day of notice. Without notice you pay for the first 30 days and nothing after. Any interruption voids it. In Dallas the district's 2% goes too, because it applies only to rooms subject to the city hotel tax (2025 assessment plan).

Recovery fees and the tax on fees

A recovery fee is the hotel's own charge, whatever the label: "State Cost Recovery Fee" at the Swexan and the Magnolia, "State Recovery Fee" at Virgin and ZaZa. It runs 0.75% of the room at the Swexan, 1% at Crescent Court and 2.3% at the Magnolia, and Caravan Court's is $4.75 per room per night. Arlington's FAQ lists a "State of Texas - Hotel Recovery Fee .525%" that owners add to room rates to recover the Texas margin (franchise) tax, and the city does not call it a tax.

Five Hilton screens, read 27 October, put a "Texas Recovery Fee" inside the rate as a "Daily Mandatory Charge". None printed a tax line, only a note that the price "excludes taxes and government charges". The fee is 0.75% at Hilton Fort Worth, 0.53% at Embassy Suites by Hilton Fort Worth Downtown, 0.98% at Embassy Suites by Hilton Grapevine DFW Airport North, 0.65% at Hilton Garden Inn Grapevine at Silverlake Crossing and 0.53% at Homewood Suites by Hilton Dallas-DFW Airport N-Grapevine. The Texas Attorney General's May 2023 petition against Hilton says Hilton's mandatory daily charge bundles a "Texas Recovery Fee".

Treat the Kimpton Harper's 4.5% "Texas Green Energy Fee" as a charge the hotel adds. Texas taxes charges for items or services that come with the room, listed separately or not, except personal services and telephone (Comptroller rule 34 TAC 3.162). Crescent Court's $40 destination fee comes "plus tax". No Comptroller page we read names resort or destination fees, and those fees have their own guide: Dallas and Fort Worth resort fees.